As of last month, Spot Bitcoin ETF issuers have been added to the list of data to be regularly monitored. The SEC took a historic step by finally granting approval for the ETF that had been awaited for 10 years. Following this significant move, the key point was the scale of GBTC sales, which fortunately were not as intense as in the initial days and are gradually weakening.
Current Status of Spot Bitcoin ETF
There were no significant changes in the latest reserve data update. Net sales on the GBTC side have been weakening for days. Starting February with an outflow of 5086 BTC, GBTC continued the month with outflows of 4,434 and 4,255 BTC. It is still unclear how much outflow will occur today. The cumulative reserve has dropped to 478,337 BTC, and considering it started on launch day with 619,162 BTC, the markets have managed to remain strong against the massive sell-off.
The cumulative asset amount of all Spot Bitcoin ETF issuers stands at 658,639, with the reserves of the 9 issuers, excluding GBTC, continuing to grow daily. While outflows from Grayscale are weakening, daily inflows of around 5,000 BTC to other ETFs have pushed the total reserve to 180,302.
BlackRock and Fidelity follow Grayscale in terms of total reserve size, holding 72,467 and 61,891 BTC respectively. The weakness of other ETF issuers suggests that some funds might give up in a few months. Currently, whether there are 3 or 9 ETFs does not make much difference.
The Outlook for Spot Bitcoin ETFs
Net inflows are impressive when compared to all ETF issuances in traditional financial markets. However, reaching tens of billions of dollars in net inflows seems likely to happen later than the overly optimistic market expectations. The reason is that investment advisors, whether affiliated with companies that do not issue ETFs or independent, are not bold enough to direct their clients to this area.
The issue is that the performance of ETFs is observed in the 3-6 months following their launch, and companies categorize the ETFs accordingly. ETFs that earn labels such as investable, high risk, or not investable are then presented to clients by advisors.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs are still not fully understood by most investment advisors and remain uncertain, so the wave of demand needed to trigger tens of billions of dollars in net inflows has not yet formed. However, it is expected to occur in the long term as the appetite for risk markets increases.
